Archive for March, 2012

Sometimes when I’m at Walmart, Target, or Hobby Lobby I’ll head over to the kids craft section and see if anything catches my eye that looks like fun… even better if it’s on sale! This creative project is a perfect example of that!

It’s a loom that you use to make beaded jewelry! While all the beads are colored a bit too bright for my slightly more adult taste, I decided a fun, bright keychain might be nice! So I created a pattern, as you can see below.

I used the pink, aqua and lime green beads to spell out my initials with a border surrounding. I meant to take pictures of the process, but I forgot, so here is the final result!

Pretty neat I think! Although, I have no clue how an 8 year old do it! It was hard work! I think I will attempt another one!

I had decided last night that I wasn’t going to do any more music posts for a bit since they’ve sort of taken over my blog… but I’ve had this song stuck in my head all day that I LOVE, so I just had to do it! It’s Gotye’s Somebody I Used To Know featuring Kimbra! I’ve heard bits and pieces of this song and other Gotye songs for a while now, but I really started to love this song when I saw this version of it where 5 people played it on one guitar! It’s pretty amazing! At any rate, they’ve started playing it a lot on my favorite local radio station, 106.1 The River, so it’s been stuck in my head since I heard it yesterday!

I hunted around a bit and found a piano part to this. But I was having a hard time deciding how to piece all the parts together (my original thought was to sing all the guitar parts, but I couldn’t find music with all the notes… ), so after putting it all into GarageBand, I gave it a rest for awhile. I went on my merry way hunting for uke music on my new favorite site when I came across ukulele chords and tabs to this very song! AND they were in the same key that I had already put all the piano stuff in Garage Band in! So I feel like I was destined to do it!

I started out (after putting all of the notes into GB as a guideline) with the bass line. I just played the notes up an octave from where their written in the piano part on my ukulele and then pulled them down in GarageBand. Then I recorded the chords strummed softly over the verses and a bit louder on the chorus. Then I recorded the high twiddly bits and used the “Helium” effect in GarageBand to make an octave higher, which as a bonus it gave it a cool sort underwater effect! Then I recorded the lead vocals and finally Kimbra’s part. The music I had didn’t show the harmony on the last chorus, so I just sort of made it up!

I’m super happy with the way this turned out! It’s not exactly how I envisioned it originally, but I like it! It’s a bit different sound than what I usually do, but I think that’s a good thing! The only thing I don’t like is all the feedback from the AC cutting in and out and the fact that my laptop sounds like a helicopter taking off sometimes… but oh well! Oh and I messed up the girl part a bit, but I don’t think you can tell… right?? BTW, if you haven’t already done so, listen to this with headphones in.. it’s surround sound and you can really hear all the parts!

Ok, I’m going to try and finish the rest of the zodiac drawings this week and take a break from music!!

So, I thought I was done with my Beatles kick, but then I came across the chords for their Dear Prudence, so I decided to give it a shot! That link is for the original Beatles version, but I also like this take of it from Across the Universe!

So, I sang the melody while playing ukulele on one track, and then I recorded the harmony parts on other tracks. Just ignore the AC kicking on and off!

I recorded this last weekend while I was in Nashville and completely forgot to post it! So here it is now, The Big Rock Candy Mountain! I found some pretty simple chords, so I thought it would be a fun simple one to do!

I recorded this on my iPad in my mimom’s living room, so forgive the banging cabinets at the end.

This post is the last in this series of Beatles songs, and it is Across the Universe! This has always been one of my favorite Beatles songs because not only is it beautiful, but the lyrics are pure poetry! You may recall that way back on Day 175 I created some digital art with the lyrics from this song!

I hope I did this song justice, other that where I ran out of breath… :/

BTW I just realized that I didn’t do a recap video for month 9. It’s harder to keep up with where I am in the project, month wise, now that I’m not saying how many days late I am, so, sorry! I’ll be posting one either later tonight or tomorrow!

This post’s song is the Beatles hit, I’ve Just Seen A Face. I tried to do more than just down strum on this one and struggled a bit with that in combination with the fast lyrics… but I’m happy with it!

Apparently I’m on a Beatles kick. Today while searching for ukulele songs I bookmarked a bunch of ones I liked and more than half of them were Beatles tunes! So, I decided to go ahead and just record a bunch of them and get some posts out of the way!

This song for this post is Yesterday. One of the most popular Beatles songs, I just recorded it in one take, singing and playing at the same time.